'I can write no more. Time and Death call me away. "The everlasting, infinite, powerful and inscrutable God, that Almighty God that is goodness itself, mercy itself, the true life and light keep you and yours and have mercy on me and teach me to forgive my persecutors and false accusers; and send us to meet in His glorious kingdom. me. My true wife, farewell. Bless my poor boy; pray for My true God hold you both in His arms. Written with the dying hand of, sometime thy husband, but now, alas, overthrown. This last cry of anguish, mingling prayer and benediction, seems almost too sacred for the general eye. But there is no sacrilege if we read it with reverence. His last words to his executioner were : "So the heart be right, it is no matter which way the head lies." The beauty of these letters suffers no abatement from the fact that though they were written after his conviction for high treason and when he was sentenced to death in 1603, that sentence was not then fulfilled. He was ultimately beheaded in 1618, being condemned to die on the 29th of October and executed next morning, in Old Palace Yard, about where the statue of Richard Cœur de Lion now stands. He lay that last night of his life in the Gate House of Westminster, and there was found in his Bible, left therein, the following lines, which the Archbishop 66 1 Though he generally spelt his name Ralegh, many contemporary writers spelt him Rawleigh, showing that the a was pronounced not as it is in star, nor as it is in day, nor as it is in gallery, but as it is in call. of Canterbury copied therefrom and gave to the world: 66 "Even such is Time that takes in trust But from this earth, this grave, this dust, CHAPTER VIII BACON BACON-Who is generally called, I know not why, Lord Bacon, which he never was,-like others of his period, wrote most of his works in Latin. But he published in his lifetime, the year before he died, the first edition of his fifty-eight essays in English. They form a remarkable contrast in style to the writings of Ralegh, though the two men were contemporaries, Ralegh being but nine years Bacon's senior. There is as much heart as head in all that Ralegh wrote, but in Bacon's essays we discover nothing but the cold light of reason, as gelid as the light of the moon. His English is precise, condensed, and pregnant, and his essays embody an arid worldly wisdom unwatered by the dew of loving-kindness or the tears of charity. The didactic lucubrations of a Lord Chancellor, deprived of his office by proved venality, need not be accepted as a guide to life. But his compositions are interesting and remarkable from the power they display of expressing much in the fewest possible words. I shall quote here his essay on "Love," as a fair example of his cold-blooded manner : "The stage is more beholding to love than the life of man; for as to the stage, love is ever matter of comedies, and now and then of tragedies; but in life it doth much mischief, sometimes like a Siren, sometimes like a Fury. You may observe, that amongst all the great and worthy persons (whereof the memory remaineth, either ancient or recent), there is not one that hath been transported to the mad degree of love, which shows that great spirits and great business do keep out this weak passion. You must except, nevertheless, Marcus Antonius, the half partner of the empire of Rome, and Appius Claudius, the Decemvir and lawgiver; whereof the former was indeed a vuluptuous man, and inordinate; but the latter was an austere and wise man and therefore it seems (though rarely) that love can find entrance, not only into an open heart, but also into a heart well fortified, if watch be not well kept. It is a poor saying of Epicurus, Satis magnum alter alteri theatrum sumus : as if man, made for the contemplation of heaven and all noble objects, should do nothing but kneel before a little idol, and make himself subject, though not of the mouth (as beasts are), yet of the eye, which was given him for higher purposes. It is a strange thing to note the excess of this passion, and how it braves the nature and value of things by this, that the speaking in a perpetual hyperbole is comely in nothing but in love; neither is it merely in the phrase; for whereas it hath been well said, 'That the arch flatterer, with whom all the petty flatterers have intelligence, is a man's self'; certainly the lover is more; for there was never proud man thought so absurdly well of himself as the lover doth of the person loved; and therefore it was well said, 'That it is impossible to love and to be wise.' Neither doth this weakness appear to others only, and not to the party loved, but to the loved most of all, except the love be reciprocal; for it is a true rule, that love is ever rewarded, either with the reciprocal, or with an inward and secret contempt; by how much the more men ought to beware of this passion, which loseth not only other things, but itself. As for the other losses, the poet's relation doth well figure them: That he that preferred Helena, quitted the gifts of Juno and Pallas'; for whosoever esteemeth too much of amorous affection, quitteth both riches and wisdom. This passion hath his floods in the very times of weakness, which are, great prosperity and great adversity, though this latter hath been less observed; both which times kindle love, and make it more fervent, and therefore show it to be the child of folly. They do best who, if they cannot but admit love, yet make it keep quarter, and sever it wholly from their serious affairs and actions of life; for if it check once with business, it troubleth men's fortunes, and maketh men that they can nowise be true to their own ends. I know not how, but martial men are given to love: I think it is, but as they are given to wine, for perils commonly ask to be paid in pleasures. There is in man's nature a secret inclination and motion towards love of others, which if it be not spent upon some one or a few, doth naturally spread itself towards many, and maketh men become humane and charitable, as it is seen sometimes in friars. Nuptial love maketh mankind, friendly love perfecteth it, but wanton love corrupteth and embaseth it." When someone in Tennyson's presence alluded to the tattle about Bacon having written Shakespere's plays, the wise old poet closed the matter with the remark that the same man could not possibly have written this essay on "Love and Romeo and Juliet-a judgment from which in my opinion there can be no appeal. In his description of the fight of the Revenge Bacon is forced by the very majesty of the scene into phrases less cold than was his wont : "In the year 1591, was that memorable fight of an English ship called the Revenge, under the command of Sir Richard Greenvil,1 memorable, I say, even beyond credit, and to the height of some heroical fable; and though it were a defeat, yet it exceeded a victory; being like the act of Samson, that killed more men at a death, than he had done in the time of all his life. This ship for the space of fifteen hours, sat like a stag among the hounds at the bay, and was seized, and fought with in turn, by fifteen great ships of Spain, part of a navy of fifty-five ships in all; the rest like abettors looking on afar off. And among the fifteen ships that fought, the great S. Philippo was one; a ship of fifteen hundred ton, 1 So spelt in my 1819 edition of Bacon's works in ten volumes. |